Factors such as events and travel fueled the recovery during 2022
Early opening, VFR links and events have been the strong factors in driving travel’s recovery during 2022, a market intelligence specialist told delegates at World Travel Market London.
“It’s the appeal of sun and beach destinations and proximity to key source markets that has fuelled the recovery worldwide,” said Olivier Ponti, vice president of Insights for ForwardKeys. He pointed to the Caribbean, Turkey and Greece as strong performers, all of which also opened borders relatively early.
The Middle East has meanwhile been boosted by major events such as Dubai Expo and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Though the sluggish reopening of Asia has seen the region lag behind, some countries, including Pakistan, have been helped by its diaspora returning to visit friends and relatives. But Ponti warned: “I think the key challenge for the Asia Pacific region is the reactivation of intra-regional travel.”
The slow build back of air capacity and post-pandemic staffing issues at some airports have hampered recovery in many markets, including the UK where a sales dip coincided with media reports of airport chaos.
“Air connectivity is way below 2019 levels,” said Ponti but he added that statistics showed it “accelerating towards the end of the year.” He warned however that with its build-back the problem of overtourism in cities was set to return.
An unexpectedly bright spot for the global industry was business travel, although projections for December 2022 are still around 20% short of 2019. Ponti said: “We heard a lot of talk during the pandemic about business travel never coming back again. This is certainly not true.
“People have realised if you want to close a deal it’s much better to speak in person, because if you don’t, your competitors will steal if from you.”
With the cost of living crisis set to be “crucial’ in affecting future travel, Ponti advised travel companies to look to luxury travel to help recession-proof their businesses. “There’s been no impact from the rise in prices from this segment. It offers really good opportunities in 2023,” he said